Saint Julian Warehouse

EAS provided a structural evaluation of an old old high-rise structures to determine its structural integrity. This warehouse is especially complex given its age, archaic construction materials, framing system and other variables. These types of projects require extensive knowledge and experience in earthquake engineering, computer modeling, analyses and design.

The District warehouse is an 8-story building designed in 1926. Its structural system consisted of non-ductile concrete frames with unreinforced masonry and concrete in-fills. The entire structure was modeled using the ETABS software to simulate its behavior under a progressively increasing lateral seismic load to complete collapse, also known as a pushover analysis. The result of the analyses is a force-displacement curve that categorizes the building behavior as ductile, semi-ductile or brittle. Due to its complexity, the computer model was required to establish acceptance criteria as well as to determine the performance of the facility during an earthquake, and ultimately provide a set of structural plans for upgrading the structure.